To recap what we’ve already discussed in part one and part two of my wedding business tips, how to market your wedding venue series, we have looked at:
Open for Business: Is your wedding venue open for business and do bridal couples even know your venue exists?
#2 – Get More Wedding Venue Bookings
Credibility and Authority: Can bridal couples trust your wedding venue business and can they find you online?
Part 3 of this wedding venue marketing series is all about going the extra mile to promote your wedding venue.
The Extra Mile
In the third stage of my wedding venue marketing plan, we focus on four extra steps you can take to get your wedding venue in front of more of your target brides in your area.
There are 4 steps in The Extra Mils stage that will really catapult your efforts to market your wedding business, these 4 steps include:
- Your Referrals (Word of Mouth) Strategy
- Your In-Person Meetings
- Your PR & Advertising
- Your Paid Ads
#1 Your Referrals and Word of Mouth Strategy
If you want to market your wedding venue to the right audience and the best target brides and bridal couples in your area or your country, you will need to ensure you have a strategic plan in place for referrals.
Referrals really help to close a deal, especially if a bridal couple is outlaying a large sum of money on something.
Booking a wedding venue is a big deal and they will want to be one hundred percent certain of their decision before putting down any deposit or booking fees.
One of the best ways to help your potential clients to feel confident and relaxed with their wedding venue booking decision is to showcase your testimonials on your website and social media posts.
But another, and most common strategy for getting bridal couples to go ahead with booking their wedding at your venue is to ensure you have an incredible word-of-mouth system in place.
How to Get More Word of Mouth Referrals From Wedding Suppliers
This might be a little difficult when you’re first starting out, but once you have established good and solid relationships with other wedding vendors in your area, you need to get them to vouch for your venue on your behalf.
A great way to do this is by inviting them to your wedding venue for a coffee meeting.
For instance, you could invite a selection of photographers, beauticians, planners, cake designers, and so on to come to your venue for a tour and ask them all about their wedding business.
The more focus you put on them and on how you can possibly help them with new leads and new bookings, the better the relationship will be and the more opportunities you will get from natural referrals.
NOTE: You do not want to create fake relationships with wedding vendors. The point of this exercise is to grow your network and get to know others in your local wedding industry.
I only recommend moving forward with vendors that you really connect with and who you would be eager to refer to your bridal couples.
#2 In-Person Meetings
Your direct interaction with engaged couples is vital if you want more bookings for your wedding venue and one of the easiest and best places to do that is at a wedding venue open day or a wedding expo/bridal show.
Visitors that attend wedding venue open days, wedding expos, and bridal shows tend to be very warm leads for your wedding business.
And so, if you host an open day or exhibit at some of your local bridal expos and shows, you will have more opportunities to connect with your target audience and give them more information about your existing or new wedding venue.
I have an article about how to get more leads and bookings from a wedding expo that you might find valuable.
Other Meetings
Another area that we should touch on in this section is your in-person meetings for wedding venue tours.
Wedding venue tours offer you a great way to really connect with engaged couples on a personal level.
Unlike at a wedding expo when you might have to rush through a conversation because they may want to move on to the next exhibitor, on a venue tour, you will have their full attention.
This is your chance to show how much you care about them and their wedding.
DO NOT make the mistake of making the tour all about the venue. You need to understand their vision, their desires, and their objections before you do the tour so that you can unpack everything that might hinder their decisions during the tour.
For instance, if you only have a garden wedding location for their wedding ceremony, the bridal couple may be concerned about the weather. During the tour, you could then mention your rain plan options.
Remember, marketing is all about getting your target audience to your wedding venue, but that doesn’t mean they will book their wedding with you.
You need to understand how to sell your wedding venue too. I’ll be covering this in a sales for wedding venues series that will be coming soon, so be sure to check out my blog archive for that.
#3 Your PR and Advertising
PR stands for Public Relations. There are several ways that wedding venues can use simple PR methods to promote their venue and get it in front of their target audience.
One of the best ways is by submitting real weddings to magazines and blogs that your target audience reads.
Some venues make the mistake of letting their ego take over with this so I’m here to help you put a stop to that.
You do not need to waste your time and energy submitting real weddings to the biggest and best magazines in your country. Yes, it does feel good to be recognized by the big publications, but your target audience isn’t necessarily reading them.
My advice is to target your local publications first. Create real long-lasting relationships with editors, reporters, advertising agents, and anybody associated with those blogs and magazines so you can continue submitting real weddings in the future.
How to Market Your Wedding Venue with Styled Shoots / Collaborations
Another great way to promote and market your wedding venue is with styled shoots and collaborations. This involves inviting local wedding vendors and suppliers to participate in a wedding setup.
For instance, a wedding designer would create the overall setup, a wedding stationer could create the menus, table numbers, programs etc.
You could invite a local bridal boutique to dress a model. A makeup artist could do her bridal makeup, and a hairstylist would fix up her hair for the shoot.
And then finally, a wedding photographer would capture all the various aspects of the styled shoot and after editing, would share the captured images with every vendor that participated in the styled shoot.
This is a fabulous way of getting your wedding venue in front of your target audience as each wedding venue that participated in the styled shoot would then share it on their websites, blogs, and social media accounts.
My advice is to host a styled shoot every quarter, but with different wedding vendors. You do not want to box yourself in with the same vendors for every styled shoot.
Use different wedding vendors for each collaboration and you will see your audience grow. If you stick to the same ones every time, you’ll only reach that same audience every time.
Guest Posts
An advanced way to promote your wedding venue to more brides is to look at guest blog postings. The idea is that you would write an article for another wedding vendor or wedding information site, like a wedding blog.
The article would be something of value to the reader but throughout the blog post, you can link back to your wedding venue’s website.
Guest blogging is extremely helpful if you get the strategy right.
#4 Your Paid Ads
Then last but not least is one of my favorite topics and my most popular VA service for wedding pros and wedding venues is paid ads.
Paid Ads refer to Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Pinterest Ads
Facebook Ads (which also include Instagram Ads) can work wonders if you really want to market your wedding venue to the right audience.
However, I do need to point out that you will be wasting your time if you do not have the first two parts of this marketing for wedding venues plan in place first.
You do not want to spend money on FB Ads too soon! Instead, you want to ensure your wedding business is already out there for brides to find, and that when they research you, they can clearly see that you’re a venue that can be trusted.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you set up Facebook Ads to target brides in your area but when they click on the ad, they land on your website that isn’t live yet or worse, has an outdated website design that really lets you down on first impressions.
Or maybe you did a FB Ad and when a bride-to-be saw it they decided to do a little bit more research on your wedding venue, but couldn’t see any sign that you exist when they did a Google search.
Instead, you will want to get as many of the wedding business tips: how to market your wedding venue set up and ready first and then move on with FB Ads.
How to Market Your Wedding Venue With Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads for wedding venues and wedding pros are very different from ads for other business categories. This is because of the psychology of a bridal couple and the specific Facebook Ads setup that we can use to maximize our FB Ads efforts.
If you want to run Facebook Ads for your wedding venue, you need to follow a Facebook Ads Strategy for Wedding Pros.
My Facebook Ads Strategy follows a 5 Ad Plan
- Omnipresence Ad
- Newly Engaged Ad
- Direct to Website Ad
- Lead Generation Ads (For Facebook Only)
- Lead Generation Ad (For Instagram Only)
Each Facebook Ad setup is done for a specific purpose. The omnipresence ad is ongoing and helps to keep your brand in the forefront of the bridal couples’ minds.
The newly engaged ad is designed to connect with those that have recently gotten engaged and to get them to follow or like your page.
The direct-to-website ad help to get more wedding venue bookings and for them to read more about your venue and what you have to offer.
And then the two lead generation ads will do just that – get more leads for your wedding venue business.
Conclusion
There you have it! My 12 Step / 3 Part Wedding Venue Marketing Plan.
When you have a marketing plan to follow, the leads and bookings come easily.
Don’t waste your time and energy guessing your way through everything.
Wedding venue marketing needs to be aggressive!
You need to reach your target audience before they find and book their wedding venue and you only have a short amount of time to do it.
Wedding Venue Marketing Plan
I hope this 3-part series – How to Market Your Wedding Venue has helped you understand what it takes to promote and market your wedding venue to your target brides and bridal couples in your area. Below you’ll find the links to the other two parts of my wedding venue marketing plan articles.
Part 1 – Marketing Your Wedding Venue
Part 2 – Get More Wedding Venue Bookings
Until the next time,
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